why must we ask the 21st century to wait outside our classes? Is it just to protect the lecture? We know what a classroom designed around lectures, notes, and quizzes can do, and it is not impressive. . . . Perhaps by embracing the new forms and structures of communication enabled by laptops and other portable electronics we might discover new classroom practices that enable new and better learning outcomes.

There is a robust body of research exploring alternatives to the lecture. Never before has technology been so able to support a new understanding of learning but, as Rivers argues, suppressing the use of new technologies avoids and ignores such discussions.

Schools often purchase software, computer devices, and technology-based learning systems because they are effective marketing tools for recruitment, or because they want to keep pace with the digital investments of rival institutions, or simply because they fear appearing outdated. None of these have to do with learning, of course, and inevitably are insufficient to smooth over the challenges that arise as digital tools enter classroom spaces.

AND

Too often, when navigating faculty or parental resistance, school leaders and technology staff make reassurances that things will not have to change much in the classroom or that slow baby steps are OK. Unfortunately, this results in a different problem, which is that schools have now invested significant money, time, and energy into digital technologies but are using them sparingly and seeing little impact. In such schools, replicative uses of technology are quite common, but transformative uses that leverage the unique affordances of technology are quite rare.

AND

As school leaders, in order to achieve the types of successes that we hope for with technology, we will have to overbalance for our staff and parents the side of the scale that contains fears and concerns with countervailing, emotionally resonant stories, images, visions, and examples of empowered students and teachers doing amazing things. That’s fairly hard to do if we’re technology-hesitant or unknowledgeable about the educative value of technology ourselves, which is why so many successful digital leaders preach over and over again the necessity of personal engagement and modeling.

There can be no question but that technology can provide the potential for isolation, for synthetic relationships, for a sedentary lifestyle, an anxiety-ridden social existence, a failure to focus, concentrate, and engage. But surely this is a worst-case scenario conception of technology without balance, without thoughtful schools, informed, engaged parents? An education system that emphasises the need to be cultured as well as educated, well-read as well as literate, articulate as well as able to skim, physically healthy as well as mentally engaged … surely an individual in this context will only benefit from the interactive tools of contemporary technology to allow them to create, design, persuade and engage? Yes, perhaps our brains will be rewired in the process, but isn’t that what the brain has always done throughout history?

We spent 15 minutes thinking about redesigning what we do – individual reflection then conversation with others in room

In Matt’s district, there aren’t separate math blocks, or health blocks, or science blocks – the entire curriculum is integrated

If you want to see what students are excited about, give them choice and see what they gravitate toward and finish first – most often it’s the activities that give them greater agency and creativity

When I started sharing what’s happening in my room, I realized that we had better be doing good stuff! – that meant giving up some control and focusing on deeper thinking work – our one rule is ‘be brave!’ and we take it from there – it takes about 3 weeks to get my kids up and running at the beginning of the year – then we roll without dozens of rules about everything

Rather than seeing a bunch of kids at one center as a problem, see it as an indication of success – how can we do more of that tomorrow?

Every year my class is first or second of our five kindergarten classes on standardized tests

Get kids excited about learning – little things like rhyming or site words come along as part of the process

My kids run into school and class each morning to see what the day’s wonder is – others tell them not to run – I say, ‘they’re excited about school… let ‘em run in here!’

Geared toward 2nd to 4th grade – may need to translate / paraphrase for younger students

This helps me find out what my kids are interested in – sometimes we spend 3 minutes on this, sometimes it launches new learning inquiries/activities and an hour later we’re still going

Each morning they have a wonder journal – they start a page, draw a picture, and write down what they wonder

Kids are good at telling you what they know – not so good at sharing what they don’t know – in the journals, they can’t write about what they know, they can only write about what they don’t know or would like to know – ‘I’m glad you know about [x], but I want to hear from you what you don’t know’

If the topic is polar bears, when they come to the carpet, they ask questions like ‘I wonder why they’re white’ or ‘I wonder why they don’t get cold’

Second semester their wonder journal becomes a KWL (Know, Wonder, Learn) journal – this 10 to 30 minutes depending on their interest

The kids never care about background noise – only adults do – we like products, we want it to be perfect – they’re just having fun learning

Toontastic

An app designed for telling stories

The first time my students use the app, their job is to make one scene/page – later they’ll do two, then three…

Example – students make a scene in Toontastic to make sense of their learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. – the best way to understand if my kids learned is for them to tell me stories – I can see what they understand, what they’re still struggling with or where they have misconceptions – helps me know what to review

The background can be whatever you want – great for explanatory videos

When kids watch each others’ videos, they’re reviewing our learning over and over again – kids learning from kids is incredibly powerful

Upper elementary students in our school use Toontastic for vocabulary – have to use several of the words in the story

Kids will get this excited about learning if we set up the environment right

Chatterpix (not Chatterkid)

Chatterpix allows you to email the final product

Take/import a picture, add a mouth, record audio…

Kids will self-differentiate a lot – e.g., taking a picture of any set of blocks/shapes, but then explain in Chatterpix how many there are of each – explaining about an animal or a book character or a historical figure – reading sight words (you can type in the app)

How can we connect this to Iowa standards?

Examples – screenshot a book page and tell what the characters are thinking (inferencing, motivation, feelings) – screenshot anything and describe its attribute – snapping a picture of a stage of work and explaining that step for a how-to video (then string multiple ones together) – write a poem of an inanimate object (then take a photo, read the poem) – pretend that no one likes your animal baby and convince someone that your animal baby is the best (persuasive speaking/writing)

Great for prewriting

Story Buddy 2

The app that we use in my class to make books – kids can draw, add text, add pictures, and change the background – also can add audio to each page – can add multiple pictures to the same page

Wonderful for digital storytelling, sharing with other students or classrooms – great for nonfiction

The paid version allows you to add audio and work on multiple books at the same time

Example – field trip to the arboretum – took two cameras and took photos of everything – imported into Story Buddy 2 and told the story of our trip – groups of four wrote books

Example – list of weather terms – these are the words I want to see in your book – write a story

Example – color words – take a picture of something that’s red – make a sentence that uses the word ‘red’

Once the book is printed, the kids own that book! – they read each other’s books over and over again – these are all on the class bookshelves for each other – if they can’t read something, they’ll go ask the author

I expect the kids to write and spell at their level

In our district we don’t have thematic (topical?) units – our curriculum is broken down into concepts (e.g., water systems, how are things connected) – science, social studies, health all tie together – in my class, we investigate kids’ interests

I’d rather have 1 iPad than 20 every other week – it’s much easier to use them when you know what you’re going to have and what you’ll have access to – everywhere I go, people are having trouble with carts – sharing iPads across classrooms is tough

Explain Everything

The mother lode of all creative apps!

Similar to Educreations but this one costs money and is more powerful

Instead of me regurgitating what I know about the butterfly life cycle, my class and I co-create a video on the butterfly life cycle – they learn the concepts and vocabulary as we go

I fill the iPad with butterfly life cycle pictures the night before but I don’t choose which ones – they pick from many options – we talk about why we’re selecting each picture (e.g., ‘I like how we can see the eggs in that picture’) – I try to get 8 to 12 options for each stage of the life cycle

We should use real pictures, not cartoon clipart – helps them connect to the real world – for career day, pick diverse images (e.g., male nurse, female doctor, Latino lawyer, etc.) – we need to be thoughtful about this – my Latina girls shouldn’t have to think that all doctors are white males

Using pictures that shouldn’t go in the book is a great way to see if they know what they’re doing – e.g., did the kid put a reptile in her mammal book? did the kid put a spider in his insect book?

They know each others’ books (just like they know every other kid’s backpack but their own!)

Use this app a lot in my reading groups – take a screenshot of a book page or import a book PDF – circle some words to emphasize – have the kid read aloud and record it – this is a great running record, able to be shared with parents – easy to show how much kids have gained in their reading skills – I can show parents what kids are reading and what they need to work on

I take a video every month (or more often) of every kid’s language acquisition, reading, etc. – great documentation for the teacher and parents

Ask kids at the beginning of the year what they like – make a word wall with 5-6 photos from what they tell you – put on their lockers – kids use these as sight word helpers all year (e.g., I need to know how to spell the word ‘bike’ – Brianna likes bikes so I will go look at her locker)

My kids learn to tweet when they’re 5 – we always ask ‘is it safe? is it smart? is it nice?’ before we post – when we’re talking online, it’s like we’re talking to a stranger – we wouldn’t give a stranger the same information we would give a friend

I don’t teach digital citizenship, we live digital citizenship every day through what we do

Kevin Honeycutt: kids are playing on the social media playground but no one’s on recess duty

Integrate digital citizenship into everyday activities – it shouldn’t be a standalone lesson or unit

We learn a lot about other classes’ locations – we trade pictures of the outdoors, our lunch rooms, our classrooms – we share videos that we made

Two years ago a tornado came through Dallas ten minutes before dismissal time – parents are in line in their cars, beating on the door to get in – very dramatic! – another class tweeted us the next morning to ask if we were okay – we replied – other classes saw the exchange and chimed in – my kids saw that these things happen everywhere, they have safe rooms too, their class had a safety bear, etc. – it all helped my kids make sense of it

A class in Japan said they didn’t know anything about Texas – we talked about it and decided to make a book – it turned out my kids didn’t know much about Texas either! – we walked down to the library, got some books, did some research, made our book, and shared it with them – every year the 2nd week of March is Texas History Week because that’s when it is in the curriculum but this year we learned all about Texas because my students needed to know about where they lived – they had a reason for why they wanted to know – we received a book back in return

Sometimes we follow experts – e.g., @cmdr_hadfield – when Chris Hadfield shared pictures from space, we would match them up with Google Earth – Pete Delkus, @wfaaweather – we sent 3 questions and he replied – every day we tweeted how close he was – in our class we worked with the number line and showed that he was close (predictions)

Channel 5 News (@nbcdfwweather) heard that we tweeted with Channel 8 News – they set up a live tweet exchange with my class where we asked questions and got answers

We have a research center in my class – as we tweet with other classes and experts, we write down terms and concepts that we run across (migration, bears, lightning) – we use that list on Friday to pick our books from the library for next week’s research center – a sheet of paper with a big box at the top for a picture, then lines below for writing – they draw and share what they’re reading in the research center

Reading books on Skype to others – armadillos, dinosaurs, cars – I hear a lot from parents that they had to go to the library to get more books on what we’re researching

Sharing about their flag with the other state/country (and vice versa) – peer-to-peer conversations that foster learning

One adult reads to Matt’s class every Friday – Eve’s grandparents lived in China and Skyped in

If they’re experts in their field, they’re passionate about their work and are eager to share it – I’ve never had anyone tell me no – authors, zoo scientists, meteorologists

We play Connect 4, Tic Tac Toe, 20 Questions, and other games with classes around the world – we play on a shared Google Doc

Sharing our learning

Doing things in real time is much better (and easier) than sharing 5 days later in the weekly newsletter

My class has a Facebook page for our parents – you’ll want to set up a closed group, not a private group – every family can have 4 members – they email names to Matt so he knows to approve them – keeps track on a spreadsheet

Every day one of my kids takes home our plastic turtle, Tiny Tim – they have adventures, share pictures on Facebook, and write about it

Video of red balloon hanging from ceiling – can you move it without touching it? – parents can see our learning about the concept of force

Kids are promoting our learning to their parents – make it a space for students to share their learning, not for you to share updates and reminders!

We share things as they’re happening in the moment, not days later – it takes 20 seconds – can do from my phone

Matt deletes group members at the end of each summer (after warning parents), then starts a new group for the new year

The Remind app is a great way to share messages/pictures to parents – you can set up scheduled texts

Weebly is an easy way to set up a web site [I recommend WordPress instead!]

The main thing is to find some way to share with parents

Symbaloo page with pictures of each kid (no names) – links to a Google Doc for each student – they write in their journal, parents read and leave comments

Here in Northwest Iowa we have the wonderful opportunity to spend two days with Matt Gomez. We have 70+ elementary teachers in attendance and almost 40 more on the waiting list (which is why Matt will be back in March!). Here are my notes from Day 1… [often in Matt’s voice, not mine] You also can see my notes from Day 2.

PLN – a group of people who are your people – you need those people around you who do what you do and with whom you can talk and share – Matt’s #1 resource is a kindergarten teacher in Montana, they connected through Twitter – every teacher benefits from being connected to the teacher next door – online colleagues take Matt outside of his bubble in Dallas – the more connected we are, the better we get – every day Twitter can inspire us and teach us – Twitter can be both real-time and time-delayed – how do we have time? we have to invest the time if we are going to improve ourselves – most of the time investment is up front – be prepared to put a little bit of time in at the beginning – 4.2 million education tweets daily

We are getting everyone set up with a Twitter account – Matt is explaining reply, retweet, and favorite – the purpose of hashtags is to connect tweets together – sometimes they’re just to be funny (e.g., #pukealert)

Every Monday night at 8pm is #kinderchat – see also #ecechat, #1stchat, #2ndchat, #iaedchat, and so on

Technology is not the end all, be all – if you don’t have a sandbox, you don’t need an iPad – focus on real experiences for kids – use tech to enhance, not replace

Don’t fall in love with the tool, fall in love with the learning that it provides – makes it easy to move from tool to tool to tool

Let them play! – when you give kids something new, let them play

Process v. product – it doesn’t matter if their gingerbread house is perfect – it never will be – let them play – focus on the learning process along the way

Learning how is greater than learning what – primary goal is to get kids excited about learning

Are you modeling the use of the technology? – we have to model ourselves so that kids can then take it and run with it – that’s why I blog and tweet and make videos – be sure to model your sharing and technology use with your kids!

The camera

The number one tool in my classroom is the iPad camera – they can take pictures anywhere, anytime (except in the bathroom) – not uncommon when we’re doing something for a kid to pick up the camera – pictures tell more about what we’re doing than anything else – story starters at home – every Friday I collect the pictures from the week and make a Facebook gallery – we make lots of books – if you want kids to write, get them excited to write – we have a photographer and a videographer for every experiment we do – every Friday we pick 3 videos to watch from earlier in the year – if you want to learn what’s important to your kids in your class, give them a camera

We have to own this

Stuck on an escalator video – we have to own all of this technology as teachers, we can’t be dependent on tech integration specialists – we are going to fail – we can give up or we can learn from it and laugh about it later – be brave

In my class, kids have lots of autonomy and choice and we do great on standardized tests

Projecting

The primary way we share what we’re doing with the iPad is through the document camera – kids can see what is being touched – 10 ways to share your iPad on a projector – assign iPad duties just like other class duties – put your most used apps in the bottom row or on the main screen

Felt Board app

The first app my kids use each year – start by just letting them play! – pair them up randomly, use Felt Board to explain who the 2 kids in the group are – upper and lower case letters (and LOTS of other t-chart uses!) – fiction v. non-fiction pictures – 4-box graphic organizer (e.g., seasons) – Venn diagram (land animals / water animals / both) – how would you put this into a literacy center? – make the empty Venn diagram with labels – put the screenshot printout at the center – now, students, you make this and then fill it in – great for story writing (INSERT PICTURE; 3rd picture = ‘get a house’) – telling a story and writing that story down are two different skills – many of these apps let me break down those two skills into separate components

Printing – we always print in black and white – we only print in color for Parent Night – I print two or three of each kids’ screenshots – they can pull their picture and write their story, they also like to write about other students’ pictures

Mix up the groups as often as you can – don’t let students work with the same peers over and over again

How can we connect this to our Iowa Core standards? (working in pairs to identify a standard and discuss a potential use of the app)

There also are Christmas and Mother Goose versions of Felt Board – wait until they are listed as free

Skitch app

Explaining how to use Skitch – we use the text tool and the arrow tool most often in my class (along with the size/color options) – touch the middle of the screen to bring up a text box – I use the digital pixelation tool to blur out the kid in my class whose picture can’t be shared publicly – I use Skitch constantly in large group instruction – for example, labeling birds – save the picture – we can use it later, they can see me using the tool – this is why I use the document camera

If you give all the kids the same picture, you get 20 of the same thing – if you give kids 40+ pictures to choose from, they can have choice and variety – I add pictures if they want one that’s not there

I talk to my kids about how to search for images safely – I don’t just tell them what not to do, we also talk about what to do when something pops up that’s inappropriate – first semester I provide the images for them – second semester I start teaching them how to do it themselves at teacher tables – occasionally a search will bring up bad things; teach them what to do; it’s digital citizenship

Tech integration starts with teachers being the leaders – ask kids ‘what app should we use to create this?’

We catch things every couple of weeks for our terrarium – we always take a picture and label it before sharing with parents

Search for ‘coloring page elephant (or whatever)’ – can download the black/white drawing, label it, print it – then they can color it – a built-in literacy center

How can we connect this to our Iowa Core standards? – we use Skitch a lot in math to show what we’ve done – a picture of a boy and a grandma (where are the verbs (or feeling) in this picture?) – describing setting/characters from a book – labeling books is a great way to use Skitch – this is the beginning of writing stories – make a Felt Board, but first they have to use Skitch to identify what verbs/adjectives they’re going to use

Can’t change a wrong answer – kids need to learn this – sorry, Johnny! – use team names if you don’t have a device for each person – can download answers at the end – there is a risk-reward between answering correctly and quickly – first kids learn not to yell out the correct answer, then they learn to yell out the wrong answer!

Examples of how to use – addition problem on screen, they have addition dice at each table – you don’t have to have a question, can just use an image – can search for and download other educators’ public kahoots – what is the ending sound for this animal’s name? (e.g., d for lizard) – for sight words, pick from “the, his, her, have” – as the year progresses, the words get harder – can get Matt’s kahoots by searching for mattbgomez

Popplet

Both free and online versions in addition to the paid version – powerful because of the different organizers – everything is synced across platforms – free version only lets you make one at a time

Since we don’t print in color, we only use black and white – we always use the largest size font

The only direction I give them on the task card is ‘make a new poppet’ (screenshot using Skitch) – teachers will spend 60 minutes laminating something for a center but get frustrated if it takes 10 minutes to make an electronic center activity because they don’t have time

Tip: take/download the picture from Safari, then pull it into whatever app you’re using

Examples of how to use – sight words – words that start with ‘i’ – show me you know what an insect is (preloaded the iPad with 20 pictures, 10 of which were insects and 10 which weren’t) – also wrote insect names on white paper, they had to pick which ones were the correct names – examples of nouns – took pictures during field day and then they picked pictures and labeled the verbs – who likes fruits and vegetables? – read a book (what word could you use on each page? or write the character? or the setting?) – sequencing using pictures from making applesauce – add pictures of rhyming words and they can spell them out – kids can sort things – students can do all of this at home with the online version!

When kids are done, they pick email jpeg and send to me (is the only email in the iPad address book) – this is a process, they have to be taught but they can do this – I don’t worry about their Popplets, they just show up in my email inbox as they get completed

How can we connect this to our Iowa Core standards?

Remember that we can save as images, pull into Skitch or another app – Matt’s images are organized in iTunes folders, then he chooses which folders are on the iPad (e.g., only the animal babies folder)

Other teachers

It’s not that they’re doing things wrong, it’s that these tools have value

How can we help our teaching peers see the value here?

Educreations

A virtual whiteboard that also can record/overlay audio and then save as a video

How many ways can we make 10? – Matt recorded each kid one at a time talking and drawing

A great way for students to show what they know

We use this a lot in math – we can show parents what we’re learning (e.g., how are we teaching place value) – also handwriting – parents can see how we talk/think about this stuff – I usually put these on our Facebook page – also good for students who are absent

No privacy concerns because you’re showing kids’ work, not their faces

App smashing – make their picture(s) in Felt Board – then import into Educreations – practice telling the story before they write it – usually partners working together – they can listen to the story over and over, which helps them remember what they want to write down

Every week we do this, their stories get longer and longer – they add more details – 2 minutes of telling a story is really good for 5- and 6-year-olds – stories can be at least 5 minutes long (haven’t gone beyond that yet)

Leveraging multiple concepts and skills with this one tool – blending together numerous standards into one activity rather than working on each in isolation

My goal is to get kids to this point by the end of the year

I keep a folder of math photos (base 10 blocks, timers, dice, etc.) that they can use to explain their math stories – they love using their own counters (e.g., Minecraft Steves, Skylanders, Frozen Elsas; we have 8 Steves and we take away two…)

Participants are using Apple TV to share sample ideas and creations from their own iPads!

Matt: “When kids create content, it sticks in their heads forever” – you don’t have to tell parents what students are learning, they run home to tell their parents what they’re doing and to look at Facebook

You want your iPads logged in to all of your accounts so you and the students can easily share

As you share the value that’s coming out of your room with these tools, it becomes easier and easier for parents and administrators to support expansion – more apps, more iPads, etc.

How come? None of the kids spend time jockeying for power, business students are trained to find the single right plan and when it fails they’re out of time, kindergarten students prototype while always keeping the marshmallow on top – young kids are not afraid to fail and do it wrong – we shouldn’t let our fears hold them back

Virtual field trips

If you can go to the zoo, go to the zoo – virtual field trips allow students to have experiences they otherwise couldn’t have

When I get home, I will make a video slideshow for my kids so they can see every aspect of my trip – for example, most of my kids have never seen the inside of a cockpit or clouds from the top

If kids ask questions about volcanoes, there are 8 million videos on YouTube – why aren’t we using them?

Google Earth – sunrise tool, measure tool, etc. – hard for kindergarten students at first to understand virtual representation of the real world – you can make path videos (e.g., from our school to the football stadium; can go back in time to show what the neighborhood looked like before) – also Google Sky, Mars, and Moon

See the World Wonders Project – great for inquiry, questioning, learning about the world

See 360cities.net – 360-degree views of different locations around the world – for example, the inside of a mosque in Iran is great for talking with kids about patterns

Wrap-up ideas

The first couple of months our stories are terrible but as the year progresses they get better and better

when you do discover those talented enough to teach with technology seamlessly, they may be the most misunderstood educators in a school, and the coolest with students and parents, but many times the least appreciated by their administrators

The carnival comes to town. It’s exciting, it’s thrilling, it is SUPER fun. But then it leaves and we’re back to business as usual.

Does this describe our technology integration activities? Or our STEM programs? Or our PBL projects? Momentary, short-term bursts of interest and excitement followed by the regular same old, same old?

We could make these higher-interest learning experiences regular and frequent components of our day-to-day instruction. Or we can continue to treat them as occasional, perhaps primarily extracurricular, carnival-like events. Personally, I believe that we shouldn’t be carnies.

I get that one must learn about tech tools but … why are we NOT putting the “how to use this app” things online and offering more discussion-based sessions on things like writing better questions, learner empowerment, designing student-driven lessons, community-based projects, teaching beyond the test, reflection, feedback, research, and soft skills … you know … the things that technology can support.

…

At some point we’ll figure out that while playing assessment app games are somewhat informing, our kids deserve much more than that when it comes to technology.

Scanning a [QR] code for a math problem to solve is “fun” but how is that technology really supporting learning? Did the question change because it was scanned versus written in a book or on paper? Don’t even get me started on augmented reality. Yes, some kids love competition, but how is playing Kahoot different than “insert clicker name here” and don’t you dare say, “because it has bright colors and music!” Just … No.

Any school or classroom or educator that ignores our digital information landscape, our digital economic landscape, and our digital learning landscape – or relegates children to passive consumption rather than active participation and interaction in those landscapes – is doomed to irrelevance. The argument that school should be a refuge from digital technologies is a desperate plea to hold on to our analog past.